Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO
David Lechnyr
Revision History
Revision 2.31 2003-07-30 Revised by: drl
Minor updates
Revision 2.0 2002-10-08 Revised by: drl
Major updates and conversion to SGML
Revision 1.0 1997-12-21 Revised by: hm
Initial draft by Hanno Muller
This document describes how to optimize and configure power management on a
ready-configured Linux system for use on battery-powered laptops. This will
be helpful for everyone who runs Linux on a portable computer system. APM/
ACPI methods of power management are discussed along with power saving tips
and techniques. There is also some discussion about the different types of
batteries available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1. Power Management
1.1. Advanced Power Management (APM)
1.2. Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
1.3. APM vs. ACPI: Which one?
1.4. SMP, Hyper-Threading, IA64 & NUMA
2. DPMS
2.1. Normal
2.2. Standby
2.3. Suspend
2.4. Off
3. Power Management Methods
3.1. swsusp(8)
3.2. hdparm(8)
3.3. sysklogd(8)
3.4. XFree86
3.5. KDE 3.1
3.6. Energy Star
3.7. Swap File
3.8. tmpfs
3.9. Miscellaneous Tuning
3.10. Power Saving Myths
4. Types of Batteries
4.1. Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd)
4.2. Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH)
4.3. Lithium Ion (Li-ion)
4.4. Smart Batteries
4.5. General Battery Care
5. Appendix
1. Power Management
If you have a relatively recent x86 laptop, odds are it supports either
Advanced Power Management (APM) or Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
(ACPI). ACPI is the newer of the two technologies and puts power management
in the hands of the operating system, allowing for more intelligent power
management than is possible with BIOS controlled APM. This is most useful for
battery-powered laptops. You can only have one power management interface in
control of your machine at a time, so it's important you decide which method
best suits your situation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Advanced Power Management (APM)
Advanced Power Management (APM) allows your computer's BIOS to control your
system's power management without the knowledge of the operating system. The
advantages to APM under Linux are that it's stable, well supported by Linux
vendors and has a solid history behind it. However, not much development has
been done with it over the past few years.
To use it, you'll need to enable APM in the kernel:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [*] Power Management support |
| Advanced Power Management BIOS support |
| [ ] Ignore USER SUSPEND (NEW) |
| [ ] Enable PM at boot time (NEW) |
| [ ] Make CPU Idle calls when idle (NEW) |
| [ ] Enable console blanking using APM (NEW) |
| [ ] RTC stores time in GMT (NEW) |
| [ ] Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls (NEW) |
| [ ] Use real mode APM BIOS call to power off (NEW) |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Most of the other APM options exist as work-arounds for known problems with
specific hardware devices, so you'll probably only want to enable the first
one (CONFIG_APM).
* Advanced Power Management BIOS support (CONFIG_APM): You'll need to
enable this in order to do anything useful with APM. User-space programs
will receive notification of APM events (e.g., battery status change) and
a /proc/apm device will provide you with battery status information.
* Ignore USER SUSPEND (CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_USER_SUSPEND): This is a
workaround for NEC Versa M notebooks.
* Enable PM at boot time (CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE): Although it sounds nifty,
most machines do not require this feature to be enabled and in fact can
hang some systems at boot time.
* Make CPU Idle calls when idle (CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE): On some machines,
this option provides increased power savings. On others, it will hang the
system at boot time. Use with caution.
* Enable console blanking using APM (CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK): Instead of
blanking the virtual console actually turn off the screen. This won't
work with X-Windows and actually can cause more problems that it solves.
* RTC stores time in GMT (CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT): If you want to store GMT
(Greenwich Mean Time) in your RTC (Real Time Clock), say yes here.
* Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls (CONFIG_APM_ALLOW_INTS): This is a
workaround for some IBM Thinkpads that hang while suspending.
* Use real mode APM BIOS call to power off
(CONFIG_APM_REAL_MODE_POWER_OFF): This is a workaround for a number of
broken BIOSes. If your computer crashes instead of powering off properly,
turn this on.
You'll want to install the APM daemon from [http://www.worldvisions.ca/
~apenwarr/apmd/] http://www.worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/apmd/ and configure
your system startup scripts to activate it on boot:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|# Start the APM daemon if it exists and if APM is enabled in the kernel |
|if [ -x /usr/sbin/apmd -a -d /proc/apm ]; then |
| if cat /proc/apm 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null ; then |
| echo "Starting APM daemon: /usr/sbin/apmd" |
| /usr/sbin/apmd |
| fi |
|fi |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The APM daemon is actually made up of three primary programs:
* apmd - handles power management tasks
* apm - a command-line tool to print the current battery status or suspend
the computer
* xapm - a simple battery meter for X
If you're looking for a simple, "works out of the box" approach to power
management for your Laptop, APM is definitely the way to go.
A simple script to notify you how much battery time is remaining can be added
to your ~/.profile file:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|if [ -f /proc/apm ]; then |
| DUMMY=`cat /proc/apm | cut -d" " -f 7` |
| # Don't display when fully charged |
| if [ "$DUMMY" != "99%" ]; then |
| LEVEL=`cat /proc/apm | sed -e "s/^.*% //"` |
| echo "Battery at $DUMMY ($LEVEL)" |
| fi |
|fi |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is the successor to APM,
which places the responsibility of power management away from the BIOS and
into the hands of the operating system. ACPI Linux is newer than APM Linux,
more flexible in responding to power management events, has seen much more
development as of late, and as a result of all this is prone to its own share
of bugs from time to time.
If you're into cutting-edge development and are not intimidated with kernel
builds and applying patches against source code, ACPI is worth consideration.
There are two parts to ACPI under Linux: The ACPI driver built into the
kernel itself, and the ACPI daemon (ACPID). ACPID in its current incarnation
is pretty simple: monitor /proc/acpi/event and do things in response. Even if
you don't load the daemon, you'll still get the benefit of ACPI features
built into the kernel such as processor thermal support.
You can determine which version of the ACPI driver you are using, along with
supported suspend states, by using:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash $ cat /proc/acpi/info |
|version: 20030619 |
|states: S0 S1 S3 S4 S4 S5 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ACPI development is progressing at a steady rate, so you might want to
consider [http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=36832]
patching your kernel against any recent updates to the kernel-level ACPI
code. Once you have downloaded the patch for your specific kernel, you can
patch it with something like:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash$ gunzip acpi-[version-kernel].diff.gz |
|bash# cd /usr/src/linux-[version] |
|bash# patch -Np1 -i ../acpi-[version-kernel].diff |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
You'll want to recompile your kernel after this, of course:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [*] ACPI Support |
| [ ] CPU Enumeration Only |
| AC Adapter |
| Battery |
| Button |
| Fan |
| Processor |
| Thermal Zone |
| < > ASUS Laptop Extras |
| < > Toshiba Laptop Extras |
| [*] Debug Statements |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
You'll also want to install the ACPID daemon from [http://sourceforge.net/
project/showfiles.php?group_id=33140] http://sourceforge.net/project/
showfiles.php?group_id=33140 and configure your system startup scripts to
activate it on boot:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|if [ -x /usr/sbin/acpid -a -d /proc/acpi ]; then |
| echo "Starting ACPID Daemon: /usr/sbin/acpid" |
| /usr/sbin/acpid |
|fi |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
A bit of history... Microsoft was the first vendor to implement ACPI. This is
both good and bad. It is good because when you buy a system, you can pretty
much guarantee that it has passed Microsoft's hardware compliance tests,
including the test of its ACPI implementation. However, these tests come up
short in that they do not indicate compliance with the ACPI specification,
but rather with Microsoft's implementation of ACPI. When that same machine is
used with Linux, some classes of errors that did not manifest themselves
under Windows may become apparent. To protect against this problem, the Linux
ACPI driver maintains a "bad BIOS" blacklist of known BIOS's that are known
to not be ACPI compliant, and as a result will refuse to enable ACPI if your
system is listed.
Many manufacturers are now validating that their systems run on Linux.
However, they use major Linux distributions with the default kernel. This
means that it is somewhat difficult to get OEMs to ensure that their systems
work with ACPI-enabled Linux until a major Linux distribution ships an ACPI
kernel. This presents a slight dilemma in that Linux distributions want to
ship kernels that run on as many systems as possible, but there have been
some positive moves in this area lately.
To conserve energy while remaining quickly available, ACPI-compatible PCs may
enter system sleep states. The ACPI specification defines five of these
states, known as S-states. Unlike processor sleep states, no work is done by
the system under S-states. Each state introduces greater power savings but
requires commensurately more time to awaken and begin performing work. These
are patterned on system states from the APM standard, a predecessor of ACPI.
Full details on ACPI sleep states are available at [http://
acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/sleep.html] http://acpi.sourceforge.net/
documentation/sleep.html. Processor states are described at [http://
acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/processor.html] http://
acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/processor.html.
For more specific background information on ACPI itself, you can visit the
ACPI website at [http://www.acpi.info] http://www.acpi.info
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.3. APM vs. ACPI: Which one?
There are currently two competing standards for providing power management:
APM and ACPI. Both cannot be used at the same time, so which one is best for
your situation? If you have a relatively recent (>2.4.20) kernel and are not
intimidated by kernel builds and patching source code, you'll find many
benefits with the flexibility of ACPI. If you just want to enable generic
power management, or are using an older machine, choose APM. Neither method
spins down idle hard drives; use hdparm for that instead. Either way, your
system's BIOS must correctly support the power management scheme you'd like
to use as well; if your system does not fully support either standard, some
of the power management options might crash your system and/or cause data
loss. You have been warned!
Even if you don't enable power management on your x86-laptop, Linux will
always issue the HLT instruction to your processor whenever nothing needs to
be done [1]. Many Microsoft Windows CPU cooling program use this technique.
This results in lowering the power consumption of your CPU. Note that the
system doesn't power down when it receives the HLT instruction; it just stops
executing instructions until there is an interrupt.
There is generally no advantage to enabling either type of power management
on servers or workstations that do not fall into these categories.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4. SMP, Hyper-Threading, IA64 & NUMA
Some SMP system manufacturers may have omitted the pre-ACPI tables used for
SMP configurations. In this case, ACPI is required.
If you have a newer system that supports [http://www.intel.com/technology/
hyperthread/] Hyper-Threading, you will need to enable ACPI (and, of course,
SMP). Without it, your Linux system may be unable to discover and initialize
all of the virtual processors.
IA64 machines require ACPI as well. Additionally, NUMA servers are starting
to require it for proper initialization.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. DPMS
DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) is a standard to reduce power
consumption in monitors. Typically, both the monitor and the video card must
support the DPMS standard in order to receive any benefit from it. DPMS
specifies four modes of operation (in order of increasing power savings):
"Normal", "Standby", "Suspend" and "Off". Two signal lines, "Horizontal Sync"
and "Vertical Sync" provide a method for signaling these four different
states to a DPMS monitor.
A good technical resource on DPMS is available at [http://
webpages.charter.net/dperr/dpms.htm] http://webpages.charter.net/dperr/
dpms.htm.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Normal
Normal means just that -- the monitor is fully powered and on. LCD laptop
panels and LCD flat screens use considerably less power than traditional CRT
monitors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Standby
Standby is used to describe a very minor power savings level. This setting
usually involves blanking the screen by turning off the electron (RGB) gun.
However, the power supply is left on and the tube filaments energized. When
you need to use the monitor again, the monitor will come back on very
quickly. This option requires DPMS monitor and video card support along with
enabling DPMS in XFree86. Standby is sometimes referred to as hsync suspend
mode since the horizontal sync signal is turned off to signal this power
management state to a DPMS monitor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Suspend
Suspend is used to describe a very strong low power state. This setting
usually involves the same power conservation as Standby however in addition
the power supply to the monitor is turned off. This option requires DPMS
monitor and video card support along with enabling DPMS in XFree86. Suspend
is sometimes referred to as vsync suspend mode since the vertical sync signal
is turned off to signal this power management state to a DPMS monitor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4. Off
Off usually means just that -- the computer monitor is turned off. Usually, a
small auxiliary circuit stays on to monitor the signals from the computer to
turn the monitor back on when data needs to be displayed to the screen.
Obviously, this keeps power consumption to a bare minimum (if not zero).
While the power saving is substantial, to reactivate the monitor may take
several seconds. This option requires DPMS monitor and video card support
along with enabling DPMS in XFree86. Both the horizontal and vertical sync
signals are turned off to signal this power management state to a DPMS
monitor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Power Management Methods
The basic goal of any power management technique is to reduce an entity's
consumption. In the case of laptop power management, our focus is on
decreasing CPU and hard drive usage. To make things a bit simpler, this is
broken down into obvious, semi-obvious, and non-obvious techniques. Granted,
your mileage may vary.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1. swsusp(8)
Suspend to Disk (S2D) is still an elusive task under Linux. The main project
at the moment is swsusp, available at [http://sourceforge.net/projects/
swsusp] http://sourceforge.net/projects/swsusp. It's still fairly new and
requires a bit of configuration to enable it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2. hdparm(8)
hdparm is a Linux shell utility that can be used to spin down and improve the
performance of various ATA/IDE drives. If it's not included with your system,
you can fetch the source from [http://freshmeat.net/redir/hdparm/4062/
url_homepage/hardware] http://freshmeat.net/redir/hdparm/4062/url_homepage/
hardware. For example, the following provides 32-bit IO support with sync
(-c3), DMA support (-d1), Advanced Power Management (-B128), write-caching
(-W1), disk spin down after five minutes (-S60). gains me tremendous
performance with added power savings. Note that your mileage may vary, and
you'll want to adjust this for your specific system to prevent data loss
(especially the -B and -m flags!).
In the following example, we run some read/write benchmarks of our hard drive
before and after using hdparm. Note that while our cache reads remain about
the same, our actual physical reads from the drive increase tremendously! If
you like living on the edge, you can play with the -m, -c, -B, and -u
switches with caution (see the man page).
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash# hdparm -tT /dev/hda |
|Timing buffer-cache reads: 588 MB in 2.01 seconds = 292.15 MB/sec |
|Timing buffered disk reads: 14 MB in 3.46 seconds = 4.05 MB/sec |
| |
|bash# hdparm -k1 -K1 -c3 -d1 -W1 /dev/hda |
|bash# hdparm -tT /dev/hda |
|Timing buffer-cache reads: 596 MB in 2.01 seconds = 297.01 MB/sec |
|Timing buffered disk reads: 72 MB in 3.05 seconds = 23.58 MB/sec |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3. sysklogd(8)
Examine your /etc/syslog.conf file for unnecessary logging activity and to
optimize its performance. If you don't want to log any system activity,
consider disabling syslogd and klogd entirely or, at the very least, minimize
the amount of logging your system performs. You can also prefix each entry
with the minus sign (-) to omit syncing the file after each log entry [2].
For example, this will log anything with a priority of info or higher, but
lower than warning, to /var/log/messages or /var/log/mail without needing to
sync to disk after each write. Since we want to keep all messages with a
priority of warning, this will be logged to a different file without
disabling disk syncing (to prevent data loss in the event of a system crash).
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|*.warning /var/log/syslog |
|*.info;*.!warning;mail.none -/var/log/messages |
|mail.info;mail.!warning -/var/log/mail |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Another item to be aware of is the -- MARK -- messages that syslogd(8)
writes. This will affect your hard drive inactivity settings. You can simply
disable this by running syslogd(8) with:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|if [ -x /usr/sbin/syslogd -a -x /usr/sbin/klogd ]; then |
| # '-m 0' disabled 'MARK' messages |
| /usr/sbin/syslogd -m 0 |
| sleep 1 |
| # '-c 3' displays errors on console |
| # '-x' turns off broken EIP translation |
| /usr/sbin/klogd -c 3 -x |
|fi |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.4. XFree86
There are essentially two different types of screen blanking that can be
performed under XFree86: BlankTime and DPMS. The first is simply a fake
"blanking" effect that doesn't actually save any power. The others are
specific only to DPMS-compliant monitors, and must be specifically enabled to
take effect. They are located in your XF86Config file, which normally resides
in /etc/X11/XF86Config.
If you have a DPMS-compliant monitor, you might want to try enabling support
for it under the Monitor section of your XF86Config file:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Section "Monitor" |
| Option "DPMS" |
|EndSection |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
To manipulate the DPMS functions, you can create/modify the following items
in the ServerLayout section.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Section "ServerLayout" |
| Option "BlankTime" "10" # Blank the screen in 10 minutes |
| Option "StandbyTime" "20" # Turn off screen in 20 minutes |
| Option "SuspendTime" "30" # Full hibernation in 30 minutes |
| Option "OffTime" "40" # Turn off DPMS monitor |
|EndSection |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
It's worth noting that BlankTime is not actually a power saving level at all.
The screen is sent a "fake" blanking effect and defaults to activate after 10
minutes. Alternately, it can indicate the number of minutes until the
screensaver should activate. It has nothing to do with DPMS.
After activating your changes and restarting X-Windows, you might want to
examine your logfile to see if your video card has any problems with your
changes:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash$ egrep "^\(WW|EE\)" /var/log/XFree86.0.log |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
There may be additional options that you can enable for your specific video
card/chip driver; see the [http://www.xfree86.org/support.html] XFree86
Documentation website for specifics.
Of course, all of this can also be activated "on-the-fly" by using xset(1).
If you don't have access to your system's XF86Config file, a good place to
put these commands would be in your ~/.Xsession or ~/.xinitrc file.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash$ xset -dpms # Disable DPMS |
|bash$ xset +dpms # Enable DPMS |
|bash$ xset s off # Disable screen blanking |
|bash$ xset s 150 # Blank the screen after 150 seconds |
|bash$ xset dpms 300 600 900 # Set standby, suspend, & off times (in seconds) |
|bash$ xset dpms force standby # Immediately go into standby mode |
|bash$ xset dpms force suspend # Immediately go into suspend mode |
|bash$ xset dpms force off # Immediately turn off the monitor |
|bash$ xset -q # Query current settings |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
If instead you're using the Linux console (not X-Windows), you'll want to use
setterm(1):
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash$ setterm -blank 10 # Blank the screen in 10 minutes |
|bash$ setterm -powersave on # Put the monitor into VESA power saving mode |
|bash$ setterm -powerdown 20 # Set the VESA powerdown to 20 minutes |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5. KDE 3.1
3.5.1. Display Power Control
Assuming you've configured XFree86 to support DPMS, simply run kcontrol and
choose Power Control/Display Power Control. From here, you can configure
Standby, Suspend, and Power off settings for your monitor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5.2. Laptop Battery
Assuming you've configured your kernel to support either APM or ACPI, simply
run kcontrol and choose Power Control/Laptop Battery. From here, you can
configure the various settings for your system based on the level of battery
power remaining.
It's worth noting that some people running ACPI tend to see the following
message:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Your computer seems to have a partial ACPI installation. ACPI was probably |
|enabled, but some of the sub-options were not - you need to enable at least |
|'AC Adaptor' and 'Control Method Battery' and then rebuild your kernel. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
If you see this, either ACPI is not installed or, more likely, KDE does not
recognize your particular Linux ACPI Subsystem. If patching the kernel with
any ACPI updates does not resolve this, you must either not use this KDE
function or, alternately, revert back to using APM.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.6. Energy Star
[http://www.energystar.gov] Energy Star is a United States government-backed
program to promote energy efficiency standards. Of interest:
* An ENERGY STAR qualified computer, in sleep mode, uses 70% less
electricity than computers without power management features.
* An ENERGY STAR qualified monitor, in sleep mode, uses 90% less
electricity than monitors without power management features.
Typically, Energy Star savings is accomplished by other power management
settings and is not, in and of itself, a power management technique.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.7. Swap File
Consider disabling your swap file in /etc/fstab to reduce hard drive access.
If you've got lots of memory, this is definitely the way to go. One way to
tell if you need your swap file is to enable it, use your system for a period
of time, and examine /proc/meminfo and /proc/swaps to determine how much free
memory you've got on average, and whether or not your swap file is even being
utilized.
For example, today I've compiled several intensive programs and have been
running my laptop for about eight hours straight. A simple examination of my
system reveals:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|bash$ cat /proc/swaps |
|Filename Type Size Used |
|Priority |
|/dev/hda3 partition 136544 0 -1 |
| |
|bash$ cat /proc/meminfo |
|MemTotal: 513880 kB |
|MemFree: 254820 kB |
|Buffers: 42812 kB |
|Cached: 142880 kB |
|SwapCached: 0 kB |
|Active: 159644 kB |
|Inactive: 76888 kB |
|HighTotal: 0 kB |
|HighFree: 0 kB |
|LowTotal: 513880 kB |
|LowFree: 254820 kB |
|SwapTotal: 136544 kB |
|SwapFree: 136544 kB |
|Dirty: 0 kB |
|Writeback: 0 kB |
|Mapped: 86148 kB |
|Slab: 10748 kB |
|Committed_AS: 203944 kB |
|PageTables: 1140 kB |
|VmallocTotal: 516076 kB |
|VmallocUsed: 1468 kB |
|VmallocChunk: 514604 kB |
|HugePages_Total: 0 |
|HugePages_Free: 0 |
|Hugepagesize: 4096 kB |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Given this, I'd opt to disable my swapfile if this is any indicator of my
future usage.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.8. tmpfs
Compile your kernel with tmpfs (temporary file system) enabled and mount your
/tmp directory using it. The useful bit here is that nothing will be written
to your hard drive on this mount point as it will act like a RAM disk
(however nothing will be saved either). The advantage of tmpfs over the more
traditional ramfs is that it lives in the kernel internal cache and grows and
shrinks to accommodate the files placed there. See your kernel's
Documentation/filesystems/tmpfs.txt for full information. If you don't
specify a maximum size, it will default to a ceiling limit of half your
available memory. An example /etc/fstab with 100MB temporary ram file mounted
on /tmp would look like:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|tmpfs /tmp tmpfs size=100m,mode=1777 0 0 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.9. Miscellaneous Tuning
Modifying /proc/sys/vm/bdflush allows a user to specify under what
circumstances dirty buffers are flushed to disk, how many such buffers exist,
etc. Details are in linux_src_tree/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt (thanks to
Marc Liberatore for pointing this out).
Boot your system and list the currently loaded modules with lsmod. Anything
listed here most likely needs to be loaded on a regular basis; compiling
these in as part of your kernel rather than as loadable modules may help to
decrease the amount of time they must be loaded from disk, and to a very
minor degree, decrease the amount of disk access required to start your
system.
Examine your crontab settings to see if anything is being run on a regular
basis. Comment out any unnecessary items. Don't forget to examine every
user's crontab, including the user 'nobody'. If you don't need to schedule
any background activity, consider disabling crond alltogether. The same
advice goes for atd.
If you run httpd to test and/or develop web pages, try altering the values of
MinSpareServers and StartServers to 1. Don't define any CustomLogging or at
least increase the value of LogLevel to warn. If you're really sure of
yourself, you can change the ErrorLog directive to point to /dev/null.
Consider creating a power-saving script that will immediately take your
laptop into low-power mode:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|#!/bin/sh |
|if [ -x /usr/sbin/hdparm ]; then |
| hdparm -y /dev/hda |
|fi |
| |
|if [ -x /usr/X11R6/bin/xset ]; then |
| xset dpms force off |
|fi |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Additionally, it's worth considering anything in the following areas:
* Adjust your system's BIOS settings to decrease or turn off your display's
backlight.
* Adjust your system's BIOS settings to reduce the CPU clock speed while on
battery.
* Avoid using PCMCIA devices while on battery. Better yet, eject your
PCMCIA cards when not in use.
* Avoid using external devices with your computer while on battery. This
includes printers, external monitors, zip drives, and portable cameras.
* Avoid using built-in devices while on battery. This includes cdroms and
floppy drives.
* Use simple software. A full blown multimedia application will create a
lot more system load and disk activity than a small simple word processor
* Use a simple window manager. While Gnome and KDE are nice, the extra time
it takes to load and run is not worth it while on battery power. One
nifty idea is to use a different xinitrc script to launch a different,
more simple window manager based on whether or not your system is on
battery power.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.10. Power Saving Myths
It used to be beneficial to recompile the Linux PCMCIA drivers to allow the
slots to have APM power support. However, most of the functionality of these
drivers are now built into the kernel itself. If you're interested in
specifics, the PCMCIA project page is available at [http://sourceforge.net/
projects/pcmcia-cs/] http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcmcia-cs/.
Some people believe that APM offers better power savings over ACPI, and
vice-versa. While their power management techniques differ, in actual
battery-usage tests, both reportedly perform about the same.
Contrary to popular belief, Lithium Ion (see below) batteries do suffer from
a memory effect. Luckily, the effect is not large over the lifespan of a
typical battery (3-4 years). Anyone who tells you different is selling
something.
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4. Types of Batteries
There are currently three types of batteries commonly used for laptops:
Nickel Cadmium, Nickel Metal Hydride, and Lithium Ion.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1. Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd)
Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries were the standard technology for years, but
today they are out of date and new laptops don't use them anymore. They are
heavy and very prone to the "memory effect". When recharging a NiCd battery
that has not been fully discharged, it "remembers" the old charge and
continues there the next time you use it. The memory effect is caused by
crystallization of the battery's substances and can permanently reduce your
battery's lifetime, even make it useless. To avoid it, you should completely
discharge the battery and then fully recharge it again at least once every
few weeks. As this battery contains cadmium, a toxic material, it should
always be recycled or disposed of properly.
NiCad batteries, and to a some degree NiMH batteries, suffer from what's
called the memory effect. Memory Effect means that if a battery is repeatedly
only partially discharged before recharging, the battery will forget that it
can further discharge. The best way to prevent this situation is to fully
charge and discharge your battery on a regular basis.
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4.2. Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH)
Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries are the cadmium-free replacement for
NiCad. They are less affected by the memory effect than NiCd and thus require
less maintenance and conditioning. However, they have problems at very high
or low room temperatures. And even though they use less hazardous materials
(i.e., they do not contain heavy metals), they cannot be fully recycled yet.
Another main difference between NiCad and NiMH is that NiMH battery offers
higher energy density than NiCads. In other words, the capacity of a NiMH is
approximately twice the capacity of its NiCad counterpart. What this means
for you is increased run-time from the battery with no additional bulk or
weight.
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4.3. Lithium Ion (Li-ion)
Lithium Ion (Li-ion) are the new standard for portable power. Li-ion
batteries produce the same energy as NiMH but weighs approximately 20%-35%
less. They do not suffer significantly from the memory effect unlike their
NiMH and Ni-Cd counterparts. Their substances are non-hazardous to the 0.
Because lithium ignites very easily, they require special handling.
Unfortunately, few consumer recycling programs have been established for
Li-ion batteries at this point in time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4. Smart Batteries
Smart batteries are not really a different type of battery, but they do
deserve special mention. Smart batteries have internal circuit boards with
chips which allow them to communicate with the laptop and monitor battery
performance, output voltage and temperature. Smart batteries will generally
run 15% longer due to their increased efficiency and also give the computer
much more accurate "fuel gauge" capabilities to determine how much battery
run time is left before the next recharge is required.
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4.5. General Battery Care
Even if the battery case looks the same, you cannot just upgrade to another
battery technology unless your laptop has been pre-configured from the
manufacturer to accept more than one type of battery type, since the
recharging process is different for each of the three types of batteries.
A battery that is not used for a long time will slowly discharge itself. Even
with the best of care, a battery needs to be replaced after 500 to 1000
recharges. But still it is not recommended to run a laptop without the
battery while on ac power -- the battery often serves as a big capacitor to
protect against voltage peaks from your ac outlet.
As the manufacturers change the shapes of their batteries every few months,
you might have problems to find a new battery for your laptop in a few years
from now. This is somewhat of a concern only if you anticipate using the same
laptop several years from now. If in doubt, buy a spare battery now - before
it's out of stock.
New batteries come in a discharged condition and must be fully charged before
use. It is recommended that you fully charge and discharge the new battery
two to four times to allow it to reach its maximum rated capacity. It is
generally recommend that you perform an overnight charge (approximately
twelve hours) for this. Note: It is normal for a battery to become warm to
the touch during charging and discharging. When charging the battery for the
first time, the device may indicate that charging is complete after just 10
or 15 minutes. This is a normal with rechargeable batteries. New batteries
are hard for the device to charge; they have never been fully charged and are
not broken in. Sometimes the device's charger will stop charging a new
battery before it is fully charged. If this happens, remove the battery from
the device and then reinsert it. The charge cycle should begin again. This
may happen several times during the first battery charge. Don't worry; it's
perfectly normal. Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully
discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule
are Li-Ion batteries which do not suffer from the memory effect.
Batteries should be stored in a discharged state since they can
self-discharge and may become inactive after a long storage period. They
should not be stored for any length of time while connected to the laptop.
High humidity and temperatures can cause the battery to deteriorate, so these
should be avoided during storage.
Do not remove and carry a battery pack in your pocket, purse, or other
container where metal objects (such as car keys or paper clips) could
short-circuit the battery terminals. The resulting excessive current flow can
cause extremely high temperatures and may result in damage to the battery
pack or cause fire or burns.
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5. Appendix
This document was lovingly handcrafted on a Dell Latitude C400 laptop running
Slackware Linux 9.0, in case anyone asks.
This document would not have been possible without the excellent material
initially developed by Hanno Muller .
Copyright (c) 2003 David Lechnyr. Redistribution and use, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the copyright notice, this list of
conditions and the following disclaimer be included.
THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Notes
[1] source/arch/i386/kernel/process.c
[2] syslogd.c